The founders of the Canadian League of Composers were young modernists who resented the conservative musical climate in Canada epitomized by the traditional British style of Canada's most famous composer, Healey Willan. In their first decade (1951–60), during which their membership grew from eight to more than forty and they presented dozens of concerts of new Canadian music, they struggled to find a balance between two competing goals: championing the cause of all Canadian composers, regardless of style, and promoting modern and avant-garde styles, which had been virtually ignored by the older Canadian musical establishment. This article probes how those tensions played out in two of the league's early activities: membership decisions and concert programming. Although the league did admit composers and feature works representing a wide variety of stylistic influences, its membership and concerts were nonetheless dominated by younger composers interested in modern styles, especially the group of composers in John Weinzweig's circle in Toronto. The group earned a reputation as young radicals because of their modernistic programming choices and a controversial policy that limited membership to composers younger than sixty. Although its members may not have been entirely successful in their efforts at inclusivity, the league's ground-breaking activities in the 1950s did help to establish a place for composition generally and musical modernism in particular in the postwar Canadian cultural landscape.

Housed in the Henry Cowell Papers at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is Cowell's unpublished notebook that comprises written instructions for using “dissonant counterpoint” along with forty-three exercises. Beyond providing information about the technique during its early development (1914–17), the archival source documents Cowell's active involvement in devising a compositional practice that has heretofore been exclusively attributed to Charles Seeger. The notebook also provides evidence of Cowell's work habits and values that challenge current scholarly depictions of the composer as an undisciplined bohemian. He was a systematic and tenacious innovator who revered tradition as well as experimental techniques. He also placed a strong emphasis on the practical application of new ideas in addition to their theoretical development. These traits account for Cowell's continued advocacy on behalf of dissonant counterpoint that extended well beyond the time he compiled his notebook. From the 1910s to the 1960s he disseminated the technique through his writing, composing, and teaching, and thus provided a life for dissonant counterpoint in American musical culture through the end of the twentieth century. Appendix B contains a full transcription of the notebook.

Using ethnographic and archival data, this article explores aspects of global superstar James Brown's participation in the black gospel music community of Augusta, Georgia, from the 1980s until his death in 2006. Using rare footage of Brown performing sacred music on a local gospel music television program, the article builds on scholars’ longtime recognition of Brown's engagement with black sacred song by engaging the singer's negotiation of sacred and secular musical and cultural boundaries from the perspective of his gospel performances. The article also examines Brown's personal relationships with local gospel musicians, ultimately arguing that his involvement with Augusta's gospel tradition near the end of his life provided Brown with an alternative social space for articulating a musical and personal identity somewhat separate from his mainstream media image.